australia

OnePlus devices are pretty popular globally, but they aren't sold in many countries, with one of them being Australia. That's changing soon, though; OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei has just announced on the OnePlus Forums that the company's devices will soon be officially available for purchase in Australia.

It's been nine months since Google Home launched in the US, but in that time, it was made available for purchase in only three other countries: Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. The story is much the same for Google Wifi, with only those three countries, along with Germany, deemed worthy enough to have it sold there. But in just a few days, our friends down under will be able to have Google Homes and Wifis of their very own.

Google never paid much attention to Google Wallet, but the change over to Android Pay came with some new marketing muscle. It's been almost a year since Android Pay landed in Australia, and now Google is rolling out a huge promotion to get more Aussies using it. The program starts today and runs through the end of 2017, but it's only open to new Android Pay users.

Living in Australia seems rough. Not only does every animal on the continent want to kill you, but you usually have to wait longer to get your hands on new electronics gadgets than folks in other regions. Google's Pixel launch is an exception, though. Pre-orders are live via the Google Store and on carrier Telstra, and the carrier managed to screw that up in the best way possible by sending out pre-orders a week early.

Samsung has made great efforts to make the Galaxy Note 7 global recall as painless and quick as possible. Earlier today they released information about the replacement Note 7 stock in Australia, revealing that (at least in the land down under) replacement stock will be available September 21. But the second part of the announcement is noteworthy - Samsung has a plan to identify safe Note 7 devices from the original batch.

Samsung reports that users will be able to check their IMEI numbers through an online database starting September 13. This will make it much easier to tell if your Note 7 is affected or not, and with IMEI identifiers being effectively unchangeable, it's practically fool-proof.

Google announced at the end of 2015 that Android Pay would arrive Down Under in the coming year. Seven months later, that time has come. Residents of Australia can now use Google's latest mobile payments solution to buy stuff using their phones.

Troye Sivan is a popular singer, actor, and YouTuber in Australia. Regardless of whether or not you know all his songs and the fact that he played young James Howlett in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, there's a techie reason you might be interested in this giveaway that he's doing with Australian carrier Optus.

The operator has partnered with Troye to offer a chance to meet him in real life to some lucky winner, but also to design exclusive Google Cardboard headsets to give away so you can watch his 360 YouTube video of a private soundcheck performance from his latest single "Talk Me Down."

Whether you're a Troye fan or not, you can try heading over to your local Yes Optus store in person and asking nicely if they have one of these headsets available to give to you.

Samsung Pay has been in the news quite a lot lately as it has added more banks in the US and expanded its availability to China, Singapore, and most recently Spain. Today, it's putting its foot in the land Down Under for the first time and officially launching in Australia.

The mobile payment method is available starting today for owners of the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Note 5, S7, and S7 Edge. Upon installing the app, users can add their Citibank credit cards and American Express cards and use their phones to securely make payments across different retailers, whether it's through NFC or MST.